Sour Seraph
by LoveRedefined
Summary: Harry and Draco both suffer through trying summers before 6th year begins. Each vulnerable and lacking something substantial in their lives, they try to fill the gaps in each other. Whether it works or not, is in fates hands.
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer**: As much as I wish I could call the Harry Potter boys my own, I fear J.K. Rowling is responsible for them. Not me.

**Involves**: Lots and lots of angst, slash, suggestive themes.

**Author's Note**: I'm not sure how long I'm planning on this story being. But it will be kind of drawn out, I want to make room for lots of detailing. So, if something isn't clear right away, chances are that I'll get around to explaining it more thoroughly later on. I really hope you enjoy it! This is basically my first fanfiction, so lots of reviews would help! wink wink Thanks!

Chapter 1

A few glass stars twinkled at him as he laid, back pressed into lush green strands that cradled and sunk under his body. Harry closed his eyes, fearful that those delicate jewels above him may break under the weight of his stare. The lawn in back of the Dursley's house was cool and soothing, accompanied by a mild breeze.

The lids shielding the fragile sky fluttered open again after a moment and redirected their gaze to the moon. It was full, it seemed to be on the verge of falling off its perch in the heightened darkness. It was as a gigantic, cratered, Christmas ornament drooping on a limb of the tree, a ring of pallor suspended in the atmosphere, a spectral over-seer of all things. It vaguely reminded him of the ghosts that vigilantly patrolled his school.

Tomorrow, he was to start his sixth year at Hogwarts.

Apprehension mingled with abhorrence in his mind. Curiosity with strangling confusion. And above all other emotion, guilt. To explain it would be impossible. To put this self-loathing into words would render him irreparable. So, he made sure not to speak of it, tried not to even think of it. But it was there. Undeniably, it dwelled in his every thought, taking shelter in every spare space in his being. A hole was bored inside him, a large one at that. Something had once lived there quite comfortably...but now the only thing that had managed to attain residence within him was the overwhelming blame...

Harry was fragmented, battling against himself, trying to defend his honor, his judgment, his very virtue.

_You did NOT murder, Sirius. Stop acting as if you had._

_Well, of course, not directly. But my actions served the same purpose as placing breadcrumbs on a pathway for him to follow. I led him to his destruction. For that, I am accountable, in dubiously._

_But you didn't know any better! You can't be held responsible....you could never have guessed that Voldemort would use you like that..._

_WAKE UP! Think about the title 'Dark Lord' for a second. Think about all those he's had killed or tortured. Do you think a man like that is incapable of lying, of using deceptive methods to get what he wants? Do you think his conscience ached after he murdered Mum and Dad? I daresay not! He bases his entire regime on the principle that you can _never _stoop too low!_

Harry was losing the fight quite miserably. All logic pointed to the conclusion that he had preassigned Sirius' fate. He lost his only family as a result of his own stupidity. Loathing was not the correct word to describe exactly how Harry had regarded himself all summer; it wasn't strong enough.

At the start of vacation, Harry eagerly awaited the first letters he would receive from his friends. He needed their advice. He needed to know that they still cared. All that had happened caused him to forget. He was so desperate for those lines of empathy, of understanding, the words that spelled out 'I love you and I know how to help you!'. However....no such letter was ever delivered. Ron and Hermione wrote, of course, but they spoke of nothing, save tedium. Harry did not care to know that the two of them were now dating. He was equally disinterested in Fred and George's thriving business and the article about them in the _Daily Prophet_.

Harry was alarmed to see that they had entirely averted the subject of his grief. It seemed insensitive, unappreciative. But more letters continued to arrive and they also read in said fashion. Eventually, Harry made an assumption as to what their reasoning was behind this cruelty.

They had no words to offer him. They never knew a suffering as great as his. They probably guessed that whatever sympathy they could supply was not enough to comfort him without sounding like they were simply regurgitating empty paragraphs of pity. It had reached the point when they had no idea _how to _console him anymore.

That prospect left a slow sinking feeling in Harry. He estimated all his organs had slipped about 5 inches downward. His feet began to press further into the ground.

He wouldn't mention any of this to them though. It would voice the awkwardness he already felt and infect them, as well. Besides, in addition to making them feel worse, it would put the old routine into motion.

Hermione would hug him, tears brimming in her eyes, whimpering some pointless sentiments about how everything will resolve itself in time. This, of course, was probably the last thing he needed to hear. A few blind words, positively saturated with pity were not going to win him over. That had been what she'd attempted to avoid after all.

Ron, however, would take on a familiar uneasiness as soon as he learned that Harry had a problem. He would leave all the talking to the girl, nodding fervently in agreement every so often and darting sharp, but fleeting glances of concern at Harry.

It was far too predictable. Harry wished that they would show some sign of behavior that was irregular from the norm. Perhaps if they just held him in a soundless embrace...

He lost focus and let himself fall into a dream.

The next morning, Harry woke, picked up the newspaper from the front stoop and shuffled a bit drowsily into the house. The Dursleys were already having breakfast. He deposited the paper on the kitchen table and went upstairs to dress and gather his things.


	2. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer**: Harry Potter was created by J.K. Rowling, which I'm sure everyone and their uncle already knows.

**Author's Note**: Woo! Draco makes his appearance! Everyone loves Draco Malfoy, and if you don't, I will beat you with a stick until you agree. I feel like some bits of this are a bit weak, but it works out alright in the end. Chapter three is in the works too. See yah!

Chapter 2

The Hogwarts Express had always held a magic for Harry that he would never be taught in school. It was release and desire, anticipation and expectation, fondness with a twinge of uncertainty looming about in the back of his mind. Every problem would be forgotten as he sped on his way to his school, his home. It puffed and sighed on the tracks, knowing that all of Harry's hopes rode with it.

This year, Harry had a different idea as he stepped into his compartment with Ron and Hermione. The Express was no longer a vessel of reassurance. It seemed cold and distant. He may have been sitting inside, but Harry felt as though he were merely looking at it from miles away. It seemed angry. Its nostrils shooting up columns of anguish and exhaustion. Its body snaked its way around its course, making it more and more apparent that the place it was carrying Harry to was not one of salvation. The image of riding within a giant serpent made his stomach wrench in terror, a cool layer of sweat and nervousness blanketing his body.

He was suddenly extremely aware of the worried expressions on his friends faces, Hermione's hand on his forehead. He was jolted back to reality, still shaken by his mounting unease. He took hold of the girls' hand and whispered, "Don't worry, I'm fine", in a faint voice.

Hermione seemed relieved to see Harry actually respond; she and Ron had been trying to talk to him for about five minutes with not so much as a nod in reply. She sighed, heaving her tiny shoulders inward.

"So, I take it you haven't heard a single word we said, eh?" Ron said after a moment.

Harry straightened up in his seat and apologized. "Sorry, I was a little distracted..."

Another brief pause.

"Well, you seem better now. That's good. Anyway, we were just talking about summer, all the scatter-brained things Ron did. I really can't believe he managed to curse Crookshanks...", Hermione said, stroking the wad of purple hair that had curled in her lap.

Harry looked in her direction and stared at what looked like a very large, very shabby, very violet wig. A closer inspection revealed a pair of contemptuous eyes, a small pink nose, a mouth and a few whiskers. When Harry recognized it as Hermione's cat, he let out a small laugh.

"I think he would have been rather fetching as a blonde, personally", Harry smirked and awaited the patented peeved expression of Hermione Granger.

"Well, I liked him the way he was", she said quickly, a shrill note of agitation in her voice, her face twisting up, then forming a pout as she gazed at the unfortunate feline.

"Why don't you fix him then?; there must be a counter curse", Harry suggested, already becoming bored with the topic.

"I'm sure she'd like to. The thing is, I don't rightly know how I got the ruddy creature that color in the first place...One minute, the beastly thing is gnawing on my elbow, the next, it's turned purple, scared to bloody hell and back by its own reflection. I guess it was that wandless magic stuff. In any case, I'm not complaining about it," Ron said, folding his hands behind his head, one on top of the other and leaning back into his seat, smiling.

Just then, a familiar platinum-crowned head poked its way into their compartment. _Malfoy_.

Draco glared down at Harry, his skin around his eyes pinched up as tightly as possible, no doubt wondering if the Boy Who Lived remembered his threat from the previous year.

Harry did. He had been frightened to be in Draco's presence again all summer, although that wasn't because he was afraid that Draco would kill him.

The Slytherin boy had lost his father. Harry felt a painful ache of remorse for him, even if they were enemies. Losing a parent to Azkaban wasn't easy, and Harry knew that Draco's pride would keep him from talking to anyone about it, letting the wound heal. It was hard to feel sorry for your rival, but Harry always had, despite all the taunts and threats. He thought of it like their own unique form of communication, their secret language made up of jeers and snide remarks. But what it translated to was something Harry always smiled and laughed to himself about. He wondered if Draco noticed just how much thought and attention he gave him, even if it was negative. It seemed like he spoke with Malfoy almost as much as Ron sometimes. It developed a kind of closeness, a comfort, an affinity for Draco in Harry's heart. And so it came to be that when Draco was hurt, so was Harry.

Harry looked at Malfoy's scrunched up expression with an earnest face. He ran his eyes up and down the other boy's body and noticed that he'd gotten taller in the past months, more slender too. He seemed like a sneering adult standing in the doorway of their cowering child's bedroom, glowering over the youth. Harry led his gaze back up to Malfoys and hesitated again before speaking.

_"_Did you want something?' Harry inquired.

"Yes, I do. I want my father back from that stinking prison. It's your fault he's stuck there, so it's your responsibility to get him out".

"I can't imagine how that could possibly be my fault. After all, I didn't _ask_ him to become a Deatheater and savagely attack me".

"You may as well have with all your bravery and morality, your ceaseless desire to save the day. It's enough to make _anyone_ want to kill you, or at the very least find you an analyst to help overcome that horrible hero complex of yours", Draco laughed in an especially smug fashion, convinced he had the upper hand.

Harry didn't care. Let Draco win. It made no difference. Harry was happy, that perverse kind of happy that always stemmed from bouts with Malfoy. He even dared to crack a smile.

"Yeah, maybe you're right about me. I am sorry about your father though, I hope you're getting on alright. I wouldn't want to lose my sparring partner to irrevocable despair, now would I?", Harry beamed, taking in the way Draco's eyes widened with immense pleasure.

"You know, I'd be so terribly bored without you, Malfoy", Harry added, perhaps a little more sincerely than he had intended.

Draco stood in the doorway, looking like someone just poured a bucket of cold water on his head. Harry had spoken with such sheer....honesty. _How fitting of a Gryffindor, always pitying their opponent_, he thought.

Bemused and slightly uneasy, no witty lines of retaliation would come to mind, so he just said, "Right...", offhandedly and walked back to his room on the train, where Crabbe and Goyle were stuffing their faces with Chocolate Frogs from the trolley.

Harry, thoroughly pleased with himself for rendering Draco speechless, was now facing an array of remarks from his friends.

"Way to get one up on Malfoy! You almost made me believe that you DID care about that slimeballs dad. While all else fails, confuse the shit out of the opposing side. Maybe I'll try that in Quidditch...", Ron said.

"Harry, you were a little too convincing, I think. You made it sound like you actually enjoy battling it out with Malfoy all the time..." Hermione said seriously, then shook her head at the ludicrous prospect, surprised she had considered it in the first place.

_Well, yes, I do. Any kind of interaction is worth it, just to be involved with him in any way at all._

It was something Harry feared might just fall out of his mouth when he opened it one day, astounding everybody, disgusting his roommates, frightening himself.

_I love Draco Malfoy._

It was manageable, as long as no one else knew.

If it came out into the open, it would burn and scar Harry with the heat of its reality. He could stand there, heart in his hands and they would blacken in the air, the organ becoming vile and tainted, charring the insides of his palms. It would no longer be his innocent obsession, his silent longing, his satisfaction with what he had now, but unspoken hope for more some day.

It would be the publics topic of interest. It would be printed in a magazine or a newspaper before he could blink. They would make it forbidden and cheap, the sad twisted desires of a poor orphaned boy. No one would know what it meant to him, how essential a thing it was they were ridiculing.

Worst of all, Malfoy would hate him or murder him, or perhaps hate him while murdering him, just for dragging him into it, forcing such embarrassment upon his good name. Any such fate was obviously less than appealing.

Hermione....might understand, the whole compassionate spirit of a woman thing taking the reins and overpowering her disappointment in Harry. Ron would...Ron wouldn't believe him. It would be some huge joke that he thought was made in bad taste.

Despite all this, he had wanted to tell Malfoy, just Malfoy, for a long time. He had a feeling that he wouldn't go around telling people that Harry Potter had a crush on him, if out of respect or just as an attempt to forget the whole thing ever happened.

Harry pulled up and bent his legs, resting his head on his knee caps, folding his arms around his shins, scrunching himself in a mildly uncomfortable little ball in his seat. He just wanted to get off that train, get out of his friends company and climb into his feather bed, pushing everything he thought out of his head to make room for dreams that would fill up the vacancy.


	3. Chapter 3

**Disclaimer**: Harry Potter was first made by J.K. Rowling.

**Involves**: ANGST![It's what's for dinner!], self-mutilation, a bit of violence.

**Author's Note**: This part of the story focuses on Draco, and how his summer went. I wanted to lay the ground work for the heavy emotional plot that I am planning on having between them [but haven't actually thought up in detail yet]. I actually really liked a good portion of this when I wrote it, and that is really saying something as I always instantly hate my writing. But anyway, it's best to think of the first three chapters as kind of a prequel. I'll get to the good stuff soon. Don't worry. :')

Chapter 3

A howling whistle cut through the compartment air. Draco flinched, blinked his eyes and snapped back into reality. He had tuned out his friends to concentrate. Harry Potter was the main topic on his mind.

He had waited so long to see him again. It felt like eternity had run its course twice in the months of summer vacation. Draco went to bed every night thinking of what he could say, what he could do, what kind of insult he could conjure to shock Harry further. It was something to do in that vast manor, something to keep the shadows away.

The days had seemed like weeks- dry, cold weeks in winter when frost had bitten the land and ice hung in curtains along the houses frame. It was a frozen palace ruled by a tyrannical rime queen, driven vindictive and unjust by distress. She was an irrational dictator governing an equally flustered nation with a wintry blade. His mother was terribly bereaved with her husband gone and debased.

Draco was the victim of her fragile temperament. She was easy to crack and the splinters stung no one worse than him. A tear-stained face would weep with sorrow while warping in disgust. Her pale hands wrapped tight around his delicate neck.

"Such an adorable boy, a prime example of pristine genes working their faultless miracle. Your father contributed himself to make you what you are today. And I have never heard you utter so much as a 'thank you' for that pretty face..."

She trailed off, eyes ablaze with the passion she wished she could harness to swallow the life of the Boy Who Lived, of Albus Dumbledore, or anyone who dared cross her prestigious lineage. Now all it could do was obstruct the breathing of her only child, and it did. Her grip grew fiercer, her finger prints transferred to Draco's neck in what looked like deep purple ink, crescent impressions were being pushed into his vulnerable flesh.

The thin boy bit his tongue until liquid red heat poured out of it, shoving its way between his teeth. He kept his eyes open to stare expressionlessly at his mother. He imagined he was elsewhere, not necessarily to avoid being strangled, but more to shield himself from seeing someone he held dear in such a state of disrepair. His milk white skin flushed from his ears, traveling on to the rest of his face.

His mother was silent, a frenzied look playing across her facial features. She released Draco, letting him crumple to the ground as a diminished power, the arrogance in him withered, his cocky demeanor dried up, his scathing self only a broken image in a mirror, totally unattainable through the glass. He was ruined.

She, however, was not satisfied with his sudden descent. He lay there, a disheveled heap pressed against the ground with no visible emotion at all. She took her wand out of her pocket, carefully, watching Draco's face for a reaction but there was none to be had. Enraged at his apparent indifference, she cast a curse on him, one so severe, it had been labeled 'Unforgivable'.

"_CRUCIO!_" She smirked at her use of the familiar incantation. A perverse interest steadied her hand until tears spilled out of her sons eyes and uncontrollable screams escaped his lips. Only then did she allow her child to fall free from the spell. She turned on her heel, fully contented, her recent rage merely a fading memory, and left Draco on the floor of his bedroom. Alone, more shaken than he ever had been, more bewildered, more frightened, more accepting, more understanding than he ever had been.

He was different. He knew, he felt it everywhere. It exploded in symphonies from his veins. There was desire for renewal, there was an urge to retaliate against his deranged mother, but a stronger one to understand her suffering. He would forgive her, he knew, but he did not allow himself to forget.

A mark spanned across his wrist, crimson beads oozing out of the fine, deep line. Another would appear the next night that she laid a callous hand upon him, connecting to the first, carving a circle around his arm. Three lines would complete a ring. By the end of summer, Draco had four blood bracelets carved in his skin...to aid his remembrance, to never forget the livid lunacy embodied in his mother, eating away at her core and his resilience.

Everything seemed muddled. It felt like he was watching said events play on a picture frame, like a boy in a portrait was collapsing on his knees, sobbing himself to sleep every night. But the boy was real, the boy was him. He cursed himself for bearing such weakness, such infirmity and imperfection. Where was his cunning and fearlessness now, when he needed them most? All the times he had called upon such attributes to mock the Gryffindors or insult Potter, they'd been there in a flash. Now, they had disappeared, abandoned him entirely.

That's right..._Potter_. Thoughts of that boy were filling up his head.

_If he could see me now, like _this, _he'd probably laugh himself senseless. No, what he would do would be so much worse...he'd pity me. He'd....he'd feel sorry for me. He'd _feel _for _me_._

The idea of receiving Harry Potter's sympathetic gestures was devastating. Draco didn't want it. That was why he'd been so cold and cruel all those years, to avoid that very thing. He feared that his defenses would cave if he was shown genuine compassion, that he would fall and he wasn't sure that Harry would still be there to catch him, if he'd want to be. It was his greatest concern. Since his well-being was absolutely always put first, he was mortified to see what might happen if that changed. So he erected his shamefully malicious barrier for all to experience.

That's how it was. That's how he suspected he would remain, forever.

He convinced himself that he would act as he normally did in front of the Gryffindors, the Slytherins, everybody, chiefly Harry. Draco felt that hiding from him was most important. A dim suspicion that Harry would see right through him blossomed in the back of his mind. That sealed it.

He would never, EVER let anyone find out about that summer, about the marks under his sleeve.

Harry was his light in the dark, his sustenance during a ferocious famine. Images of him catching the Snitch, flying freely on his broom, being ridiculed by the Potions Master, trying to stand up to the Slytherins and succeeding only at making a fool of himself...They all rushed into Draco's mind whenever they could. He'd drift into slumber, smiling at the courageous boys green eyes and lightning scar, the serenade that was his laughter and the glare he reserved especially for the Malfoy family.

_I can't wait to be back at school again, to see him. He'll help me be myself again._


End file.
